writing-plans

writing-plans is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from axiomantic/spellbook. It costs 81 tokens per session (3,711 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for turning a software specification or requirements document into a detailed implementation plan before coding. It breaks work into small steps and uses TDD, a method of writing a failing test before the code that makes it pass.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to plan software features, convert design documents into coding tasks, specify exact files and outputs, and organise test-first development.
Why use it?
It prevents vague plans, missing requirements, and unclear implementation order when a feature needs to be built.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: mentions subagents.

Good fit Use it to plan software features, convert design documents into coding tasks, specify exact files and outputs, and organise test-first development.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/axiomantic/spellbook/writing-plans
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add axiomantic/spellbook --skill writing-plans
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/axiomantic/spellbook

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for writing-plans

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/axiomantic/spellbook/writing-plans/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/axiomantic/spellbook/writing-plans)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/axiomantic/spellbook/writing-plans"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/axiomantic/spellbook/writing-plans/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for writing-plans

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/axiomantic/spellbook/writing-plans"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/axiomantic/spellbook/writing-plans.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 81 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,711 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Rogue Agent · line 68
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00081 $0.03711
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.01855
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00742
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00371

Measured yesterday against content hash 8bb4a3438d72, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

writing-plans scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/writing-plans/SKILL.md · 333 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 333 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Writing Plans

Announce: "Using writing-plans skill to create implementation plan."

Invariant Principles

  1. Zero-Context Assumption - Engineer reading plan knows nothing about codebase, toolset, or domain
  2. Atomic Tasks - Each step is one action (2-5 min): write test, run test, implement, verify, commit. This governs STEP granularity WITHIN a work item; the revert test (see Work-Item Granularity, adjacent to Capability Groups) governs WORK-ITEM boundaries — the two do not conflict.
  3. Complete Specification - Full code, exact paths, expected outputs; never "add validation" or similar
  4. TDD Flow - RED (failing test) -> GREEN (minimal pass) -> commit; repeat
  5. Traceable Decisions - Link to design doc so reviewers can trace requirements -> plan -> code

Inputs

Input Required Description
Design document OR requirements Yes Spec defining what to build
Codebase access Yes Ability to inspect existing patterns
Target feature name Yes Short identifier for plan filename

Outputs

Output Type Description
Implementation plan File ~/.local/spellbook/docs/<project>/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-<feature>.md
Execution guidance Inline Choice of subagent-driven vs parallel session

Reasoning Schema

<analysis>
- What does design doc specify?
- What files exist? What patterns used?
- What's simplest path to working code?
</analysis>

<reflection>
- Does each task have complete code (not placeholders)?
- Can engineer execute without codebase knowledge?
- Are test assertions specific (not just "works")?
</reflection>

Read the full file on GitHub · 333 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday Changed · -59 lines 8bb4a3438d72
  2. 5d ago First seen · 392 lines · 81 tokens per session scan A ba4acc9825dc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

writing-plans is a skill published in the GitHub repository axiomantic/spellbook (10 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 81 tokens to every session and 3,711 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.